


warm as creatures who have been close to the sun

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-22
Updated: 2013-04-22
Packaged: 2017-12-09 05:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An empty stage and sand. They overlook all metaphors for a moment of bliss.</p><p>A 'romance sans paroles'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	warm as creatures who have been close to the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hands by Siv Cedering
> 
> For River and Eleven anniversary. Kind of.

_‘The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.’ - Oscar Wilde_

 

They are running out of distractions.

The Sycorax they knocked out with a spilled sandbag is lying on the floor, centre stage, while they are lurking motionless backstage, cramped for space, holding their breath.

Herds of Sycorax are scavenging the aisles, from the orchestra pit to the gods, tracking the Doctor and River, though they ignore it is them they are tracking, methodically and inefficiently. They buzz around, rummage the seats and bark orders in every direction, startled when the acoustic sends them back their infernal racket. Eventually they retrieve their unconscious soldier and set to leave, yet the process of gathering their scattered party is proving lengthy and clumsy, even more than the search.

See. Not fun.

And the Doctor and River are running out of distraction. They are stuck between a squeaking spotlight and a drop cloth only too eager to undulate at the slightest movement. The Doctor tried once, half an hour ago, to inspect the lighting equipment, only to be expertly and violently elbowed by River. Not a ripple was seen on the curtain, obviously humouring River in her quest for his perpetual belittling.

The Doctor is following the Sycorax moving about below, peeping out through the curtain and trying very hard not to cover his trousers in sand. He seems remarkably bad at crouching. As he glances back over his shoulder, he catches River wrapped up in a perfectly sane pastime, for once.

She is on her knees, bent above a large sand spill, smooth like a canvas, simply drawing. The curve of her wrist, creamy and round, stands out before the dark cave of the wings.

Keeping down, he edges close to her and squeezes in his head and upper body under her arm. Settled in her lap, some overgrown bony cat, he devotes himself to the survey of her dainty hands hovering above the pale surface. She draws a sun, forefinger lazily gliding across, gently furrowing the gilded layer. He ungallantly snorts and has half a mind to retort when she dips her head and deposes a silencing kiss on his lips. Upside down, her hair are disturbing the sand, leaving light trails like fantastical, bizarre and beautiful fossils. Looping and billowing before his eyes, never a theatre was adorned with such contrary and wild curtains.

‘Shut up,’ she mouths against his lips and delicately pecks at them, teeth grazing gently before straightening up.

She resumes her drawing.

He makes a contribution of his own in the form of a smiley, soon eaten up by a pair of swelling lips she traces.

He is propped up on his elbow, his torso still nestled between her arms and chest. Her chin rests on top of his head, her thighs softly brushing his abdomen. They are overlapping each other, straying in each other's warmth, tickling each other's skin with every breath.

Under skilled hands appears a wave and another, soon to meet and grow into the sea. He knits his brows and extends a wave so that it becomes a calf, a hip, a ribcage. His fingers are imprinting the sand pretending they are tickling her skin. Her whole body shudders with the repressed chuckle, waves of laughter pulsing and propagating within his, so interlocked their frame.

He draws a shell; she kisses his ear.

He draws a bird; she kisses his lids.

He draws a fish and his whole mind warms at her light telepathic touch.

For a cloud, she gives him a fondle.

For a star, a radiant smile.

And for a box, ancient and blue, an embrace so tight, so enshrouding, he loses any notion of what is hers or his, where she begins and he ends. A boundless cloth woven with their bodies thrown upon time is holding it for the moment.

They bind their hands together and wipe off the sand anew to a blank slate. The wood underneath brazes their palms and causes them to simultaneously gasp. He deposits a kiss on her hand, little and her head gently waggles on his left shoulder. Their warmth is so solid against each other’s skin they both try and grasp it, chuckling when their hands encounter flesh, a hand and a face, instead of pure energy.

She outlines two hearts, textbook perfect anatomical chart of a time lord cardiovascular system. With his hands he erases the double linking artery. She tugs at her bottom lip, eyes hunting the mistake she made. There are two hearts.

Around the left one he draws, as well as he can, a figure, distinctly masculine, distinctly dangly; around the right one, he draws a figure, distinctly feminine, distinctly River. She quietly laughs and caresses his neck, plunging into the collar to feel his pulsating bosom, and letting sand in. He squirms and takes her hand, sternly brushes off the grains as a father would dust off his pig-tailed daughter.

She doesn't let him and with mock candour painted on her face, gently she taps his hands inciting him to take up his venture in sand drawing. Instead he takes her hand, small, chubby, worm hand and guides it.

With curiosity, she follows her hand abandoned to his, dipping into the sand.

He traces almond eyes – she sighs – a knobby nose – she harrumphs – full lips – she trails them long his nape – her jaw. He loses it on the corkscrews and volutes of her hair, tying gallifreyan sonnets in them.

She purrs, escapes his grasp only to capture his hand. Beside her sloppy portrait, she delineates his square jaw – he nuzzles it into the flesh of her thigh – his mocking lips – he kisses the crook of her arm – his childish nose – he pouts looking up – his eyes. His hair she draws with tenderness driving his hand with nonchalance, her hold feather light.

Caught between her warm little palm and the sand, his hand might never feel more blissfully caressed.

His fumbling accidentally erases her nose end. She pulls a face in jest and in retaliation he bites the tip of her snout. She squeaks and, challenged, dives forward to topple the hair of his portrait. Her fingers then proceed to mess his own hair, sinking deep and long into his scalp. Between smothered gurgles of delight a dignified and breathless 'stop it' manages to escape his lips. He sets to make her fall over, she’s faster and with a flick of the fingers undoes his bowtie. For a second he scowls at her, head awkwardly tilted to get a glimpse of her towering mop of curls. They both plunge, aiming for their respective portrait. It is a tangled mess of limbs and bites, yet they endeavour to spare the artwork and when they sit back straight, unknotted from one another, side by side at last, they realise both of them have sketched hungry parted lips on the features of the other. They smile. 

The Sycorax long gone, they dare not say a word though. He helps her to her feet, securing her hand in his, ready to leave and run. Yet witnessing their portraits, well-behaved at their feet, they stop. Eyes anchored to him, River slips her shoe off and starts writing with her toe on the sand, a low hum on the lips.

He shivers, immediately mirroring her movements; forwards, backwards, round and round. Gathered in each other's arms, their bodies folded like hands and responding to a melody only they seem to hear, they dance. The sand is sent waltzing across the dark boards, like pale flares of light. Whirling across the stage and writing, silent, in fifty different gallifreyan ways, possible and impossible, things mortals are not allowed to understand.

 


End file.
